


Ulterior Motives

by Ellenar_Ride



Series: Mending Links [14]
Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures
Genre: Blue doesn't trust anyone, Blue has anger issues, Character Study, Gen, Mending Links 'Verse, but not how you might expect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:14:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24173434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellenar_Ride/pseuds/Ellenar_Ride
Summary: Blue’s brothers see the best in people. It’s one of the things he loves most about them, that kindness, that capacity to care, that desire tohelp.But Blue sees the world through jade-tinted glasses, and he cannot look at the people that surround them in the same naïve light. Blue can’t bring himself to trust strangers with anything he loves, especially not the health and happiness of his precious brothers. So Blue wears his anger like armor and wields it like a weapon, keeping others at a distance.(Prompt: Protectiveness)
Series: Mending Links [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1545610
Comments: 12
Kudos: 38





	Ulterior Motives

Blue is, to put it plainly, a jerk. A monster. A self-absorbed, stone-hearted sadist. He’s heard it all before, from so many sources he no longer even pretends to have kept count. Everyone has an opinion they feel the need to share, particularly within earshot. He acts hot-headed, irrational, but in truth his anger burns cold, a low simmer that never fully settles, waiting for the right trigger to boil over completely. Sometimes, if they’ve been alone for long enough, he even stirs up trouble with his brothers to keep his anger burning when it threatens to ease down to lukewarm. He refuses to let his anger die; it serves too valuable a purpose.

His brothers don’t understand. They’ve never said as much, but it’s obvious in the way they look at him when that rage rears its head. They think he’s being unreasonable. They think he’s being childish. They think his impossibly ever-present anger is due to a lack of control, rather than a carefully calculated choice. It stings a little, sometimes, but not enough to make him stop. Because his anger isn’t a sword, it’s a shield.

Blue’s anger is the shield he swings from his back when Red has been too kind to someone who does not appreciate it and he’s about to get his heart broken; a quick glare and a clenched fist are enough to give pause to all but the most stalwart of ruffians. Blue’s anger is the line drawn in the sand when Green’s authority, Green’s _capabilities,_ are challenged; a scathing insult and a hand on the hilt of his sword is enough to make people shut up and listen. Blue’s anger is the sturdy wall built in an instant when Vio is lost in his own head and the people around them stare and point, giggle and whisper and mutter; the fury in his eyes and the gleam of light off of sharp, bared teeth is enough to silence their wagging tongues before a single insult can fall from their mouths.

Blue’s brothers see the best in people. It’s one of the things he loves most about them, that kindness, that capacity to care, that desire to _help._ But Blue sees the world through jade-tinted glasses, and he cannot look at the people that surround them in the same naïve light. Blue can’t bring himself to trust strangers with anything he loves, especially not the health and happiness of his precious brothers. So Blue wears his anger like armor and wields it like a weapon, keeping others at a distance.

At the start, he wasn’t _fast enough_ with his anger. He still had those old impulses to compose himself from when they were one, all those repetitions of _do not act in anger_ echoing in his skull. At the start, Red’s tears were a common sight; he would try to be helpful, try to offer kindness, only to have it rejected with a verbal slap in the face. At the start, Green’s insecurity flared up every time one of them turned around; he would try to be assertive, to conduct himself as the leader they had decided he would be, and strangers would stick their noses in where it was neither needed nor wanted to scold, to critique, to deride. At the start, Vio would barely speak because everywhere he went someone was there to mock him, to make fun of the lapses in his speech when his brain switched tracks and raced off in a new direction or how much weight he gave to odd little details when choosing a topic of conversation. At the start, Blue didn’t know how to defend his brothers from a foe he couldn’t kill.

Blue decided, early on in his independent existence, that he would not allow such occurrences to continue. He refused to keep letting strangers make his brothers cry. So he started cultivating his anger, fueling it with the memories of his brothers’ tears, of Red crying in the street and Green crying in private and Vio wedged into the smallest space he can find sniffling quietly. In the beginning, he overdid it and left himself at the boiling point all the time, until he was snapping and snarling at his brothers over the tiniest offenses. It took months to figure out how much to dial it back, just how much fuel the fire needed to keep simmering without boiling over or cooling off, but he managed. He struck a balance where his temper was always leashed until he _chose_ to unleash it, yet always solid enough to be called on in an instant.

With that constant foundation, Blue is always ready to act. Always ready to step between his brothers and the stranger of the moment who’s causing trouble. Always ready to glower and snarl and bare his teeth, curl his hands into fists or rest one on his sword. Always ready to use his anger, and his body, as a shield to keep his brothers from harm. Because when he fails, their tears _shatter him._ Blue doesn’t cry, as a general statement, but his brothers’ tears break everything in him into miniscule shards, brittle and sharp-edged, and the sensation in his chest is such that he might as well have swallowed glass.

Even at the Homestead, Blue feeds his anger. At first it’s because he doesn’t trust these look-alike strangers; even if they’re all _Link_ that doesn’t automatically make them safe, and he needs to protect his brothers. _Needs_ it, with a fierce desperation that expands beyond the bounds of comprehension. Even later, when he’s finally begun to trust that these others will not hurt his brothers, when he’s begun to see them as his brothers (and sister) as well, he continues to feed his anger. This time, for the same reason as he did when it was the Quartet alone in the wilderness—the need to have that shield ready at a moment’s notice, just in case of a threat.

**Author's Note:**

>  _Oof._ Blue, sweetheart, you're _killing me_ here. 
> 
> Okay, so I wanted to explore Blue's anger in a less stereotypical fashion than "short-tempered with no self-control". So then I thought, okay, maybe his anger is intentional, and maintaining that constant anger is actually an immense demonstration of control and will? But then why would he choose to be angry all the time? And then I realized that, while his brothers are all perfectly capable of defending themselves from _monsters_ , the way I've characterized them makes them super likely to get harassed by other _people_ , and Blue might be trying to defend them from _that_. And then this happened.
> 
> (Not to be too biased, but I think this might be my favorite ever interpretation of Blue.)


End file.
